Despite the news this week that Britain has avoided a double dip recession, the prospect still looms over the country. And having researched the figures, I am still extremely worried.
I hate to be a pessimist but, I believe it’s all over, leave your serviced offices and your commercial properties. The dreaded double dip recession will rear its ugly head again.
Who do we have to pull us out of the financial calamity? Well, no one really. Two upper middle class politicians, who were not, strictly speaking, voted in by the general populace. Their only advantage being that they are not the other guy that we didn’t vote for either.
GDP growth in the first three months of the year was 0.5pc, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed. But, this figure merely offsets the 0.5pc contraction in the final quarter of 2010.
John Hawksworth, chief economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said, ‘excluding the impact of the snow in December, the preliminary GDP figures suggest that the economy has flat lined over the past six months, with no underlying growth in output since the third quarter…The figures show that the UK is still teetering on the edge of a double dip recession.’
The ONS confirmed that the 0.5pc contraction in the final three months last year was entirely weather-related, following December’s severe snow. It has also explained that ‘in the absence of abnormally poor weather, activity would have returned to its normal level … [which] would result in observed growth of 0.5pc [in the first quarter of 2011].’
As a result, growth in both the final quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 was effectively zero. In all, the economy is still 4.2 per cent smaller than its pre-recession level.
In other words, we are up the proverbial without a paddle and the boat has just sprung a leak. I wish that I could give some advice but my crystal ball seems to have a double dip shaped crack in it and no longer works. So…Viva the revolution…Viva.
Previous Post
The World’s Premier Serviced Office Space
